


Phalerate

by error_era (orphan_account)



Series: 3AM Products of Procrastination [4]
Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: erik's pov, some abstract thing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-08
Updated: 2012-12-08
Packaged: 2017-11-20 15:13:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 590
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/586749
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/error_era
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Let it never be said that Charles Xavier was not a man of calm and control.</p><p>A few years after Cuba, something cracks.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Phalerate

In the depths of your mind, there is a sphere. Large, smooth and beautiful, made of glass so strong and so defensive that it would rather cut than shatter. The sphere has no beginning, no end, no sense of up or down. As you had intended it to be.

But it is not empty. Inside, thousands of wine bottles float, empty yet full, corks shutting them tight. There is a variety; each bottle is different, yet similar. Like a hot iron brand, burned in different positions and directions, reflections of the same image over and over.

In the middle of it all is a boy. Small, thin, and pale, speckles of brown scattered across his skin, like lost cattle in the fields. He's bordering on adolescence, dressed in blue pinstriped pajamas, made of fine cotton (the finest). His dark mop of hair ends at his collar, and it's a little longer than it is conventional, but it suits him.

He's been in here for years, decades (two, or maybe three, but you seem so much younger than that  _mein Gott_ \--). Sleeping, awake, dazed and alert all at once. He floats with the bottles, swiftly containing the newly opened ones with a stopper, sealing them tight enough for even the strongest men to hang their heads in shame. They'll overflow, the boy thinks, as he lets them drift from his hands. Overflow and drown him, trapped within.

But the bottles are piling up, and it's becoming more and more difficult to keep track of what's open and what isn't. The boy is anxious, scrambling across the room to the steady flow of red, dirtying his feet even as he glides towards it. There's less space in the sphere, now; the bottles have all begun to hover, and the boy has stopped being able to do the same. The designation of ups and downs terrifies him.

And for good reason. I believe that's my fault. You were so much better at staying calm than I ever was, better at smoothing out the lines and making things right, better, bearable. Perhaps handling my views--so viciously incompatible with yours--has made that seemingly bottomless serenity crumble, bit by bit. Frustration, fury; more so now than before when I was under your care (because I wasn't really any different from those children we took in, was I?).

The bodycount for both sides are rising, theirs even more so. Red is pouring in from all directions, and the boy is too panicked to find the opened bottles, too panicked to realize that they've shattered. The liquid comes up to his waist, red, thick and dense, so much so that he can't feel anything that's submerged. He gropes at the bottles, shards slicing his skin as they fall, but he can't reach them.

You're trying so hard to hold onto your peace, your calm, even through all this. Their injustice, my violent acts of revenge. The latter upsets you the most, I know, even though I still think it shouldn't. They take our kind into labs and treat them like rats in cages, prodding and poking until they bruise and bleed and break. You've seen them yourself. I've shown you, I doubt you've forgotten (I haven't).

The boy drowns. Red is still filling the sphere, pouring until the glass cracks and gives way. Thick liquid lash out like snakes, flooding the nothingness that surrounds where the sphere once was. Pinstriped pajamas are nowhere to be seen. Rage takes its place.

 

 

Red has never suited you more.


End file.
